iPhone battery life

I'm new to the world of iPhones, so a question for those who have them: Does your battery life swing from one extreme to another? I don't use mine too much, so it spends much of the day just standing by. However, my battery life can either be amazing (like 3+ days on a charge) or kind of sucky (1 day on a charge). It also doesn't seem to matter where I am--battery life hasn't changed while on the road.

The phone is a 4S, and I did the software update. I have all of the push notifications and location service-type stuff turned off. Data is always off, too.

I visited the Genius Bar two weeks ago. The guy listened to my story, ran a diagnostic and said, Well, it all looks good from here, but it could be a software problem; want us to replace the phone?

There wasn't enough time to back up my stuff, so I made a follow-up appointment for the next week. Of course, all that week battery life was amazing. The second Genius said that since there's a record that they offered me a replacement phone, I can take them up when I'm ready--as long it's before the phone's first birthday.

The past few days, battery life has gone back to marginal. So, is this normal, or am I just being paranoid?

That seems strange to me. Then again I plug mine in every night regardless - some days I'm on the phone well over an hour, while others I barely use it at all. I can't remember any time when I didn't make it a day though, even with my usage.

I have all the location services on and use a bunch of data during an average day, will listen to an hour or two of music, and of course a few calls totalling on average perhaps 30-60 minutes. Typically the phone comes off the charger at 7 am and back on aroun midnight and will be typically anywhere from 3% up to 15% battery remaining. Long answer to say "no" but I'm guessing your use is much lighter than the typical iPhone user. Have you done the recommended run until dead then full charge routine to both extend battery life and calibrate the power meter recently?

Any cell phone gets it's battery killed if it is in a marginal service area. Constantly looking for connection seems to drain a battery very effectively.

that is the one thing I like about android over iphone.. I have extra batteries I can charge and carry with me to pop in when one goes dead.

With my work schedule, it is a must, there are some days I am only home 4 hours

Depends if you're using a bluetooth device or not in some situations. If I use my earpiece, it will kill the phone faster.

I do use the 3G internet on my phone all the time, so my battery life is definitely short lived. However, if I use the Wifi at home or wherever available, it doesn't use as much juice.

The other thing I noticed, is that if you have a bunch of apps that use Location Services, it will run while the phone is in sleep mode and will use up the battery.

As noted above, on all cell phones, the farther you are from a tower the harder the phone works to keep the connection. If you only get two bars in your home or office then your phones battery will use up a bit quicker.

Another big power suck is vibrate. It is considerate to keep your email messages notifications on vibrate but the power needed to move the little vibration motor is greater than the power needed to activate a speaker for a sound.

My battery life swings, but only based on use. When on the road, using navigation and bluetooth, it will be sucked dry in a day. When everything is turned off (location services, notifications, bluetooth, WiFi) and I am in good signal range it will last 3 days or more.

Here's an interesting trick that a lot of iPhone users don't know. When you click on the home button to close an app, it doesn't really close. If you DOUBLE CLICK the home button you will see a string of icons accross the bottom that are all the open, running apps. You can then touch-and-hold on one (like you are re-arranging a home screen) and it they'll dance and give you a little red button on the upper left of each icon. tuching the red button really closes the app. when I found this out I had like 40 billion apps running - every thing I'd ever opened. Now I religiously close them all and my battery life has doubled.

It may not help if it actually is searching for coverage or something like that, but it can't hurt either.

Thanks for the tip about the apps. I just turned them all off. We'll see if anything changes.

Thanks again.

And maybe it's just my phone's personality. This week, I'd battery life was average--not great, not horrible. Since last night, it's been amazing. Well, at least it's not getting worse. I downloaded the software update yesterday, too.

Thanks again for the tips and stuff.

interestingly I just updated my iPhone to OS 5.1 this morning and one of the listed fixes were some unnamed changes to improve battery life. I haven't used it a ton today but have been listening to music for several hours and it's still at 86%. Maybe the update helped.